Posted on 07/29/2012 5:46:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
Why is it okay to be a successful athlete, but not a successful business owner?
It’s been nearly two weeks since President Obama delivered his now famous “Roanoke rant,” wherein he noted to entrepreneurs that, among other things, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Apparently the president’s spiteand vitriol for business owners isn’t playing so well with voters. By the middle of last week, the Obama campaign was doing damage control with a new video advertisement explaining that the President had just been “taken out of context,” and he actually loves business owners.
But watch the “full context” of the Roanoke speech, and it becomes even clearer that the President was once again speaking the language of collectivist economics. While assuming the absolute worst about the motives of business owners, President Obama was again suggesting that wealth creation and material success are neither to be attributed to, nor enjoyed by individuals – only the collective masses can take credit for such successes, and we should all collectively share in the blessings of one-another’s wealth.
Call it socialism, call it Marxism, call it what you like. The president has made it clear throughout his professional life that he loathes the economic success of individual companies and business owners (unless, of course, such business owners are donating to his campaign), and regards their financial achievements as ill-gotten gain.
But would you ever expect the President of the United States – even President Barack Obama – to apply this kind of thinking to athletes? And after the U.S. Olympic Athletes return home from London, will the President invite them to the White House and lecture them on how “somebody else made it happen?”
It’s unlikely that President Obama would treat the Olympic competitors with the disdain that he shows to business owners. And if his recent treatment of a certain women’s college basketball team is any indication, then the U.S. Olympic athletes may be in for a real treat.
Two days after his “you didn’t do that” speech about business owners, the Baylor University women’s basketball team was welcomed to the White House for some time with President Obama. Speaking before the media, with the “Lady Bears of Baylor” standing on a platform behind him, the President recognized the achievements of the coaching staff, and then stated that “If there’s one thing to describe this team…it was dominant. Last season, the Lady Bears scored more points than any team in women’s college basketball history…”
Never did the President suggest that being “dominant” was problematic for the basketball team members. Likewise the President didn’t suggest that being the scoring leader was a selfish or greedy type of pursuit, or that the points were accrued by some sort of corrupt means. The President made it clear that the Lady Bears were number one, and they deserved to be recognized as such.
And might there have been some government-sponsored underpinning to the ladies’ success that the President could have noted? No doubt some of the Lady Bears are attending Baylor University with scholarship funds, some of which are probably generated from private donors and others provided by government agencies.
Yet President Obama didn’t single-out any financial aid recipients and tell them “you didn’t get here on your own,” nor did he bother to remind the players that they didn’t build the courts that they play on. Instead, President Obama chose not to malign the basketball players and coaches at all, but rather gave them high praise for their success.
In America we recognized the value of challenge – not just on the court or playing field, but in business as well. When everyone plays by the same rules, competition can develop human character, produce great products and services – and put lots of points on the scoreboard.
After the London games, our U.S. Olympic Athletes will likely get the “Lady Bear” treatment at the White House. But it is a disgrace that the President of the United States can’t understand the virtues of market competition, the way he understands the benefits of sports.
The sports analogy is a good one, because it proves the worst thing about Obama's reasoning-that it's simply contrary to what we all see in the real world.
Don’t forget, Hollywood and actors are permitted to be successful in the current regime as well.
Absolute, total rejection by the vast majority of students was the result. No, it wasn't my teaching style. No, it wasn't my personality. It was the complete vacuum of values developing in this nation that was the reason for the lack of desire to learn much of anything not perceive as "fun" by the students. Many other very good teachers have gone through the same experience (and changed careers as I finally did).
You can't blame any leader, much less Obama, for capitalizing on the Godlessness and ignorance of a people and enslaving them. You can't teach them. You can't persuade them to have a change of attitude. You can't get them to see the value of skills developed over a long period of time of tough study and self-discipline. Without values, a people can NOT do those things; will NOT do those things.
So, my father's wise words ring true again..."People get the kind of government they deserve." Anyone with a strong foundation of values simply can not tolerate what the left is doing to this country. Problem is, so few people are right (ambiguity intendended). Without a value system that excludes lying, robbery, rape, theft, malicious gossip, filthy movies/music and killing innocent people in theatres, schools, malls and wherever else you can find soft targets, the nation's final end is inevitable.
For many years I have used the moniker of "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin" and the tagline "Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you." for a valid reason. It has always been an attempt to persuade folks to wake up and do what is right before it's too late. Very soon now, it will be too late. Obama is not calling the shots. No president now is ever the one making the real decisions. Powerful people behind the scenes are the puppet masters. Congressmen, wealthy corporate individuals, military leaders and mistresses are influencing leaders to make the decisions they make. Most of the advice they are giving or using to direct leadership is evil because the people are evil and those individuals in contact with leadership are coming from the general population.
So, when people refuse to listen, then they get a leader like Obama who plans to enslave them. They deserve it. If they decide then to turn to God and ask forgiveness and change their ways, Obama and leaders like him will go away. Their philosophies and points of view will not be tolerated.
So the scripture says...
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
Romans 6:2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
Romans 6:3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Romans 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection,
Romans 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;
Romans 6:7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
Romans 6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
Romans 6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
Romans 6:10 For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Romans 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,
Romans 6:13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
Romans 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
Romans 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
Romans 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
Romans 6:17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
Romans 6:18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
And again in Galatians 4:
Galatians 4:4 But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
Galatians 4:5 in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"
Galatians 4:7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
Galatians 4:8 However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods.
Galatians 4:9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
Pretty much sums it up.
Obama was quite clear. America, you deserve no credit. You’re not special.
The politics of envy was never more brutally clear.
One way to explain the apparent paradox:
Obama was talking to amateur athletes. His message to them was that hard work is a good thing. And, for amateur athletes, there’s no large monetary reward to be jealous of.
When he talks about businessmen, he doesn’t acknowledge their hard work; moreover, he is jealous of their wealth, and wants to incite jealousy in the voter base.
I have been thinking this throughout the Olympics. There is Lochte’s commercial about not wishing and hoping and wanting to get to the Olympics, but swimming there, as an example. The attitude that hard work, discipline and focus is the reason they are in London permeates the coverage.
I see this as evidence that there is an underlying understanding that we need to earn our successes.
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